On Tuesday 9th of February, 2016, I got some signs of a cold. Runny nose, sore throat. No big deal. I thought it was just that so didn’t think much of it. The next day Wednesday it got a bit worse, so I started looking for “the signs”. Just in case. Then, on Thursday afternoon I got the Dengue fever “bingo”: fever, joint pains, headache, eyes feel like popping out of their sockets, and the “rashes” (which really looks like the tissue is melting under the skin). I had Dengue fever. The question that immediately came to my mind was: what now?

For context, about 120.000 people had Dengue fever in Malaysia last year. On average one person per day dies from Dengue, and there are constantly outbreaks in our area. The official story is that there is no treatment, and I believe that they believe that, because my wife had Dengue fever a few years back, went to Gleneagles (one of the top hospitals in KL), and almost died. They had no treatment to offer, which was in line with the official statement and official guidelines. So given this, if the hospitals were basically counting on luck, what was I to do?

Fortunately, since her outbreak, we had done some research on how viral infections work, and what could possibly be done to counter them, at home and rather inexpensively. So, we had prepared by buying a particular compound online, in case something like this came along.

Because of this, on that Thursday afternoon, as my body was just in extreme pain, we started a protocol that we thought could work. Sleep/rest, chicken soup for energy, and every hour a large glass of water with sea salt and this compound. In the evening I had to take double dose sleeping pills to sleep, because of the pain. The rashes were now all over my body, and again, to call them “rashes” doesn’t tell the whole story, because it really looks like the tissue is breaking apart, especially wherever there was pressure on the body. It looks horrible!

The next morning I woke up and checked myself for the Dengue symptoms again. They were all gone, apart from the rashes. No pain, whatsoever. Twelve hours with this magic compound was all it took, or so it seemed. Wow. I felt happy and relieved on the one hand, and very angry on the other as I had apparently found out the secret weakness of the Dengue fever virus. If it was this simple, and this cheap, more should know about it.

I continued with the protocol throughout Friday, and by Saturday morning even the rashes were COMPLETELY gone. So less than 48 hours after the onset of the critical phase of Dengue all the symptoms had just vanished. No fever (35.5C at one point, usually in the 36-37C range though), no pain, no rashes. Amazing! Thinking that I was clear I then started to taper off the protocol.

But then, by the next Tuesday morning the rashes were back. That’s odd I thought. It means the virus is still active, and all I had done was suppress the symptoms. I approached the problem as any engineer would with a black box, given the inputs and outputs, but not knowing how the box itself works. The conclusion I came to (skipping over the details here) was that the compound had NOT dealt with the Dengue virus per se, but had instead suppressed another disease: scurvy.

So now you can guess what the “magic” compound was: Vitamin C. What I had found in my research was that anti oxidants kill viruses, Vitamin C is an extremely powerful anti oxidant, and of all Vitamin C forms sodium ascorbate was a good choice, as I had been taking it in very large doses. The daily recommended intake of Vitamin C is about 100mg, and I had been taking about 20.000mg/day. That is half a teaspoon of sodium ascorbate in the water, every hour, which adds up to about 20.000mg/day if you do that ten times per day. This is equivalent to about 200 glasses of orange juice, which is practically impossible to do, not to mention that all that fructose will have bad side effects.

So if all my protocol had done was to suppress scurvy, but the virus was still there, then the logical conclusion was that the joint pain, headache, eye ache, and rashes were all signs of scurvy, not Dengue fever. The body was still fighting the virus, using up Vitamin C, and when it reached low enough levels the scurvy came back.

With this in mind I changed my approach. Instead of taking Vitamin C to fight Dengue, or more correctly, to fight the “Dengue symptoms”, I went back to a high dose protocol of Vitamin C and instead started to look for signs of Vitamin C overdose. Why? Because that would be the true indicator that the body was no longer needing Vitamin C, as an anti oxidant, to kill the virus. I continued this for a week, and then started seeing the first signs of Vitamin C overdose. I stopped the protocol, and soon after the rashes came back. The Vitamin C overdose signs was not telling me that the virus was gone, just that the fight was winding down. So I started again, but now with the idea of tapering down, rather than quitting completely once the overdose signs came. At this point I had then successfully, and accidentally, turned the “Dengue symptoms” on and off 3 times, by just using high doses of Vitamin C.

And that was it really. Two weeks later I could stop the protocol, with no signs of virus infection (no fatigue or runny nose), and no recurring rashes (so no scurvy). It took two weeks, but in those two weeks the main symptoms I had experienced were general fatigue and a runny nose, which is simply the body fighting the virus using the Vitamin C.

What had I learned through all of this? First of all, and most importantly, I had learned that the so-called Dengue symptoms have nothing to do with the Dengue virus infection. All of that pain was scurvy, due to low Vitamin C levels, and so that’s what my protocol had been fixing, more than anything else. The Vitamin C levels were low because our hypothesis was correct: anti oxidants are used by the body to fight the virus, and Vitamin C is the champion of anti oxidants.

I had also learned that taking 20.000mg/day of sodium ascorbate is not that hard, especially compared to the equivalent 200 glasses of orange juice they represent. It doesn’t taste sour at all, and taken in powder form in a glass of water was quite easy. Unfortunately most supermarkets and pharmacies don’t sell sodium ascorbate, they mostly have calcium ascorbate (which is NOT IN ANY WAY RECOMMENDED FOR HIGH DOSES, because of the calcium toxicity that would follow), which is why we had to buy it online at iHerb.com. So if anyone reading this wants to be prepared for a similar situation, either do what we did, or buy “Vitamin C with bioflavonoids”, and stay away from other types of products. Check the ingredients list carefully.

I also learned that what is known as the critical phase in Dengue fever, which in my case occurred on that Friday, is probably simply the body giving up as it runs out of Vitamin C. By countering that I had completely bypassed all the horrible things that it does to your body, and all the things that doctors and hospitals normally would look for. The official Dengue fever guidelines focus almost exclusively on the critical phase, and for good reason, they just have no idea how to treat it. In my case the scurvy had been treated effectively and rapidly, and so my experience of having Dengue fever was quite different from what you would see in a hospital.

Given this, and given that so many people come down with Dengue and have a terrible experience and possibly dies, it would be good if some doctors or hospitals at least as a start monitor the Vitamin C levels in the blood as the patients go through these phases. Even if they just follow the official “we have no clue what to do” guidelines, just to see in a clinical environment that Vitamin C levels are indeed low would be a good start. Second, even better would be if doctors try out high doses of Vitamin C as treatment, to see if it could provide some relief. No belief needed. It’s so inexpensive, and so simple to do, that if it doesn’t work (for whatever reason), there is no real loss. Lastly, for those who like me feel that there is no point in going to a doctor or hospital if you get Dengue fever, as they officially have no treatment, then the above should give you some ideas of what to do.

If you are curious about Vitamin C and virus infections, and how I got this idea, then check out Thomas Levy on YouTube, who have some excellent presentations on the mechanics of Vitamin C and virus infections.

4 Responses to I got Dengue fever and survived, here’s how

The “classic” one: diarrhea. So for two weeks I had no problems with that, even though I was ingesting 20.000mg of Vitamin C per day. Only at the end did it become an issue, as described, which I took as a good sign, as it meant the virus infection was being successfully beaten by the body.

I had cold. Took 3g every 2 hours and after 5/6th dose I was recovered. Did the same to my coughing, wheezing, tachypnea-ic daughter ( 1 g every 2 hour) and by 3 rd dose every symptoms were gone. So, as I also live in Malaysia, where everywhere has dengue cases, I’d absolutely do Vit C to BT if me or my family ever got it. Try telling this to any medical or health professional around you and I’m sure they’ll look at you as if you’ve grown horns on your head. My dietitians, pharmacists, doctors friends are still advocating 100mg/day dosing. I just pray that they’ll get enlightment soon. For the benefit of their patients. They have no idea what they’ve been missing.